This article originally appeared in the April 2009 issue of Architectural Digest.

If you cannot find the truth right where you are, where else do you expect to find it?"

The rhetorical question was posed by Dogen, the 13th-century Japanese scholar and founder of the Soto branch of Zen Buddhism, whose quest for spiritual truth compelled him to sail from his native land to China and back. What a relief his words must have been to his students, who may not have been so eager to traverse the perilous East China Sea in search of satori at a time when "luxury cruise" meant any cruise one managed to survive.

Nearly a millennium later, the sentiment is built into the design of a remarkable house in northern Arizona: a faithful iteration of a Japanese minka, which translates very loosely as "a residence for average folk." Today the word minka can be used more generally to describe any house that features classic Japanese design elements. If you're sitting on a tatami at an irori (sunken hearth), screened by shoji and taking part in a tea ceremony, there's a very good chance you're in somebody's minka.

For the owners of this particular minka, Dogen's question resonates. Michael and Patricia Longstreth were living and working in Phoenix, where he had been raised. Some years ago, when Patricia Longstreth's centenarian grandmother was dividing her estate among her grandchildren, the couple knew immediately how they wanted to honor her gesture. "We decided that it would be nice for our family to have a weekend place," says Michael Longstreth. In tribute to his wife's grandmother, they wanted the design to reflect her Japanese roots and remind their fourth-generation children of their own—in a place where trickling creeks and snow-blanketed pines might create a Zen-like landscape for restful family interludes.

A sumi painting by Jimmy Komatsu adorns the engawa, or wood veranda, which overlooks a lush water iris garden. The Longstreths and their Murakami relatives ”wanted a weekend house that would transport us from our busy lives in high-temperature Phoenix,” says Michael Longstreth.

They found just such a property in Arizona's scenic Mogollon Rim, where elevations climb up to 8,000 feet and where aspens, rather than cactuses, rule the arboreal roost. Bordered on two sides by protected forest, the area still has dirt roads and overhead power lines—a far cry from sprawling Phoenix, only a two-hour drive away.

After purchasing the acreage, says Michael Longstreth, "we looked around for architects, but because what we were after was so unusual, they didn't feel comfortable doing it." Luckily, there was a member of the family who felt perfectly comfortable working within the Japanese vernacular: Patricia Longstreth's beloved uncle, the late Mits Murakami, a landscape architect who had collaborated closely on Ro Ho En, the Japanese-style garden in downtown Phoenix. Given the closeness of their relationship, says Michael Longstreth, "we wanted to build it so that our family and Mits's family could all be there at the same time. So I drew up how we wanted it to look, mainly by going through books and picking out concepts." As the project's unofficial supervisor and enforcer of authenticity, "Mits would solve the riddles whenever we hit a problem."

Matsuyama Betso, as the house came to be known, comprises a 3,000-square-foot main house on five levels, a gatehouse, a three-car garage and a bathhouse. In the main house, a living pavilion of two tatami-covered rooms—one for dining at a low table over a recess in the floor, the other a meditatively minimal space where tea ceremonies can be held—is surrounded by shoji that open to reveal an engawa, a wood-floored veranda. A half-flight below the living pavilion is the kitchen; above it are bedrooms for the owners, their family and guests. Clutter is absent; pillows are stacked simply and artfully in one corner. In another is a tokonoma, a raised alcove devoted to the placement of art and ikebana, or flower arrangements.

Bathing in traditional Japanese culture can rise to the level of ritual and is often performed in separate structures designed to cleanse the spirit as well as the body. In Matsuyama Betso's detached bathhouse, the tub—a converted horse trough, Patricia Longstreth admits with a delighted laugh—is heated from below by fire.

Michael Longstreth recalls soaking in his bath, combined with the view of the spring-fed creek and treelined canyons beyond. "I had a lot of tension associated with my job, and it would build up all week until we could get out to the house. Then I'd get in the tub and look out over the canyons, and it would disappear. Pattie is much more competent in matters of meditation and that sort of thing. But, man, that tub has always worked for me."

There are, it is said, many paths to enlightenment. Why shouldn't a good, long soak be among them? Or, to paraphrase the master: If you cannot take a bath right where you are, where else do you expect to take it?

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